Clark is not, as they say, in a good headspace. His wife has left him because she can no longer cope with his alcoholism, and he\u2019s operating a used furniture store, Cap\u2019n Clark\u2019s Ottoman Empire, while trying to get his career back on track. His wife took the house, so he\u2019s also taken up residence at the store. Rock-bottom deals may abound, but customers do not. An attempt to record a promotional TV ad for the store\u2014complete with breeches and a tricorn hat, pirate puns, and excessively rolled R\u2019s\u2014ends in failure when a chair collapses beneath him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clark, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, is the main character in the psychological horror film “Backrooms<\/a>“, this summer\u2019s box office hit. The film explores the overlapping concepts of liminal emotional states and liminal spaces. Specifically, it explores Clark\u2019s attempt to navigate the transition back to a normal life after the divorce, and the seemingly endless maze of spaces he discovers in the furniture store\u2019s basement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clark may be in a desperate state, but it\u2019s not for lack of trying to improve his situation. He\u2019s determined to rebuild his life with the help of his therapist, Mary. He listens to her self-help tapes and attends regular sessions in her office. In a particularly poignant scene early in the film, Mary asks Clark to reenact moments from his past to help him move on and forge a new path, bringing his fragile emotional state into sharp focus. With Mary role-playing as Clark\u2019s wife, they reenact the night his wife left him. What starts as a retelling quickly shifts into Clark reliving this traumatic scene, and he becomes enraged. The moment his dreams and marriage crumbled around him is a memory he\u2019d rather bury. His wife accuses him of failing to support her dream of becoming a lawyer because he didn\u2019t get to be an architect. \u201cI am a fucking architect!\u201d he screams. \u201cI\u2019m just stuck selling shit furniture because someone won\u2019t get off their fat fucking ass and help me.\u201d Pardon his French, but the outburst makes his motivation clear: being an architect is central to his identity. The walls of his office at the furniture store are covered with sketches on bumwad, haphazardly pinned in place. Unfortunately, if his taste in furniture is any indication of his skills as an architect, Clark\u2019s issues may be deeper than we thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Released in May 2026, \u201cBackrooms\u201d quickly became A24<\/a>‘s highest-grossing independent film of all time<\/a>. A breakout hit on a tight budget in this genre is nothing new, with one coming along about once a decade. The success of films such as \u201cThe Blair Witch Project\u201d (1999), \u201cParanormal Activity\u201d (2007), and \u201cGet Out\u201d (2017) can be attributed to subject matter familiar to a wide audience. \u201cBackrooms\u201d is no different when it comes to exploring the limits of uneasiness, tension, or downright horror a familiar setting can evoke. It doesn\u2019t take years of architectural education or practice to have a visceral reaction when walking through an empty hotel corridor or a deserted airport concourse. These liminal spaces\u2014\u201climinal\u201d derives from the Latin, limen<\/em>, meaning \u201cthreshold\u201d\u2014are meant to be transitional. Often full of people passing through, they can feel eerie or downright haunting when empty. What sets \u201cBackrooms\u201d apart from these other films is that its creator and director, Kane Parsons, is only 20 years old. Parsons began exploring the horrifying potential of liminal spaces using the 3D animation tool Blender to create a series of short clips. He posted the clips to his YouTube channel, and they quickly went viral. Within a year, several studios approached him about developing the \u201cBackrooms\u201d concept into a feature film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Clark discovers the Backrooms late one evening after the store\u2019s lights flicker and his television erratically changes channels. He checks the electrical breaker box in the store\u2019s basement, sees a narrow line of light emanating from a blank wall, and falls through the wall into another dimension of yellow-hued, mostly empty rooms. The first few spaces are not too different from an empty version of the furniture store, but they are even more nauseating in their banality. It\u2019s a Cartesian dreamscape of jaundiced wallpaper in various painfully bland patterns, despair-inducing wall-to-wall ceiling tiles, and carpet the color of unsalted butter. Clark doesn\u2019t venture far before the seemingly anodyne spaces become more distorted and his unease turns to dread about what may lie around the next corner. What begins as a generic abandoned 1990s office (with questionable architectural moves easily explained as the result of a hasty design process) becomes a disorienting clash of dull spaces with elements of the outside world\u2014advertising banners emerging from the ceiling, shoes embedded in the floor. Soon, walls jut randomly into rooms, floors slope at odd angles, and lighting fails to illuminate acute corners. The film deftly adds to the tension and suspense with a soundscape of harmonically dissonant buzzing from fluorescent lights and the wavering drone of air-conditioning fans, punctuated by eerie electronic tones and pings. The farther Clark descends into the rabbit hole, the darker, grittier, and more derelict the spaces become. But for every room piled with discarded clothes, there is one resembling a half-remembered fever dream of Christmas morning in your grandmother\u2019s basement. The novelty seems to excite Clark and overpower any hesitation about what this place represents. If he can\u2019t create as an architect, maybe he can find fulfillment in discovery. But it soon becomes clear that he is not alone in the Backrooms. And whatever is lurking around the corner is not there to help him navigate this new world he\u2019s discovered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For a debut feature by a filmmaker not even old enough to drink, \u201cBackrooms\u201d is a skillful study of how space alone can fill us with dread. As unsettling as it is immersive, the world of the Backrooms is all the more impactful because of how familiar it is. Some have noted eerie similarities between the Dallas Pedestrian Network and the spaces depicted in the film (The Dallas Morning News<\/a><\/em>). \u201cThe Shining\u201d stands as the foundational example of cinematic liminal spaces, but the grand scale, intricate details, and finite setting of the resort amplify the feeling of isolation, not a sense of deeply familiar unease. And like the seemingly infinite online forums that elevated it to mainstream fame, \u201cBackrooms\u201d illustrates how easily the familiar can become a twisted version of itself and breed paranoia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n